Thursday, September 4, 2008

John Stemberger: “If I blow my brains out”

John Stemberger, leader of the anti-marriage amendment in Florida, attempts to explain how the law of cause and effect -- in and of itself -- is how gay marriage will ruin his marriage:

Arthelene Rippy: Let’s go back a little bit to this equal…equal rights question, which always comes up. So they would say, how, if this same-sex couple is married, how does that affect John Stemberger’s marriage?

JohnStemberger: Right. Well, you know, I gotta tell you Ar--one of the things I appreciate about you and this show is, is that you have a holistic understanding of home and family. So many of us compartmentalize everything, as if ‘politics’ is here our ‘family’s’ here, our ‘religion’s’ here, and never the tw--see that’s a very secular view. And the Bible sees life as an integrated whole, we do all thi--everything we do we do to the glory of God. And so you understand that and I really appreciate that. And so it does have an impact. Private behavior, does have public consequences.

And so, we have laws against suicide. Well why is that? Well because I’m connected to, a woman in a marriage, I’m connected to a family with children, I’m connected to a business, a community, an economic system. If I blow my brains out, somebody’s got to come and pay for that and clean it up. There’s a cost -- to things -- and we don’t just live in an isolated situation.

Hillary had it partly right, it doesn’t take a village--it takes a family and a community. But the idea is we need each other, and our private behavior does have public consequences, and the State’s police power is important enough, and this an important enough--legitimate enough issue to use law and public policy to regulate the definition of marriage.

SayNo2.com (formerly floridaredandblue.com), which seems to be more active than EQ as far as fighting the amendment is concerned.

And as a little birdie just told me, you may also want to check out votenoon2.com. So far, I like their style.

And don’t forget about Florida's KnowThyNeighbor.org, where you can search for the names of those who've signed the petition. (note: not all the names may be on there, some have been turned in since that list was first provided.)

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And just to share, my brother and his wife signed to get that amendment on the ballot. No surprise there (as they're AG), but it would seem that the rest of my family couldn’t care less how offensive that is to me.